Peter Lucas: Inescapable truth: Gore's no Hillary fan

Time to get on Clinton's presidential bandwagon may be short, but Al Gore's memory is long.

The issue came up the other day when People magazine reported that Gore, who was vice president for eight years under President Bill Clinton, "firmly declined" to endorse Clinton's wife, Hillary, for president.

Gore, the hero of the climate-change movement, found the climate was just not right for such an endorsement, even though the Democratic Party nomination for Hillary Clinton appears to be a foregone conclusion.

"It's still too early, in my opinion, to endorse a candidate or pick a candidate," Gore said. "Everybody can look at how the presidential campaign is developing and get some pretty good ideas about how they think it's going to turn out, but I think it's premature. The election is still a full year away. I think I'll wait to wade into it."

That is what Gore said. But it is what he did not say that struck home with a lot of political insiders, especially people in and around the Bill and Hillary Clinton political machine.

What he did not say is how he still bears a grudge, as well as scars, from when he was badly used -- and routinely embarrassed -- by the Clintons when he was openly pushed aside by Hillary Clinton when Gore was vice president and Hillary was first lady.

Advertisement

Earlier, upon assuming office in 1993, Bill Clinton and Gore agreed to a pact setting out Gore's responsibilities in various fields, as well as his role as presidential adviser.

But the warnings that Gore would end up as "third fiddle" came shortly before the inauguration in a New York Times Magazine story that noted that "Al Gore hasn't yet realized there is going to be a co-presidency, but he's not going to be part of the co," and that Gore "would have to adjust to a smaller role."

It became clear from the first week -- actually the first day -- of the Clinton administration that although Gore was vice president, Hillary Clinton was second in command.

It was during his first week in office that the president, without Gore's input or knowledge, appointed Hillary to head a health-care task force to come up with a universal health-care system. Gore was not even named a member. The health-care plan went nowhere.

Breaking with decades of tradition, Hillary Clinton set up an office in the West Wing of the White House, alongside Clinton's senior staff advisers, where she would help formulate policy. Before that, first ladies customarily operated from the East Wing with their official duties limited to social and charitable causes. Hillary ended up having offices in both wings of the White House.

Gore soon found out that practically everything Bill Clinton thought about proposing had to be cleared through Hillary Clinton, leading staff members to refer to her as "the Supreme Court."

Dee Dee Myers, President Clinton's press secretary for two years, told Sally Bedell Smith, author of "Bill and Hillary Clinton: The White House Years," that when any major White House initiative was under consideration, "We would always say, 'Has the Supreme Court been consulted?'"

"Gore was the one most affected by Bill's reliance on his wife," Smith wrote. "It was a given in the White House, as Chief of Staff Mack McLarty said, that everyone would 'just have to get used to' the fact that Hillary, along with Bill and Gore, had to 'sign off on big decisions.'"

David Gergen, who was counselor to President Clinton in 1993 and 1994, called the "three-headed system" a "rolling disaster," according to Smith.

As bad as it was for Gore, the one-time senator from Tennessee ran for re-election with Bill Clinton in 1996, planning to run for president in 2000, which he did.

But when he did, he found that much of the White House political and public-relations energy -- as well as major Democratic Party fundraising activity -- went not to benefit him, but Hillary Clinton's 2000 campaign for the U.S. Senate in New York. Gore believed it made a difference.

She won; he lost.

And to add insult to injury, Gore, in one of his last acts as vice president, presided over Hillary Clinton's Senate swearing-in ceremony in Washington, setting the stage for her eventual run for president, the office that, thanks to her, eluded him.

How would you feel?

Peter Lucas' political column appears Tuesday and Friday. Email him at luke1825@aol.com.

Welcome to your discussion forum: Sign in with a Disqus account or your social networking account for your comment to be posted immediately, provided it meets the guidelines. (READ HOW.)
Comments made here are the sole responsibility of the person posting them; these comments do not reflect the opinion of The Sentinel and Enterprise. So keep it civil.